Have you ever had the feeling that the world is just out to get you? Well, the past five days or so have definitely left me with a distinct feeling that the fates are conspiring against me.
“When it rains, it pours…”
Wednesday afternoon, the day before I left for San Diego, I got into a car accident. Some irresponsible jerk ran me off the road and caused significant damage to my vehicle. A fitting start to a very weird weekend. The weekend ended with me at the airport chasing Danny Batterman car down the road and not being able to flag him down as I realized I’d left my cell phone in his car. What a disaster…
I went 10-6 at the Pro Tour and finished 77th on tiebreakers which were 1% less than the person who finished 75th. That one percent tiebreaker was worth exactly $1000.
Every cloud has a silver lining, but I’m pretty sure the silver lining of this cloud is all daggers.
My Pro Tour finish is pretty disappointing, but my Pro Tour experience is something that I can look back upon with a lot of optimism.
The team that I played with for this event was fantastic, and I was really glad for the opportunity. I tested with Team Luxurious Hair, which included eventual Pro Tour winner Craig Wescoe.
I was able to plug in my computer at the terminal and found Craig logged in on Facebook. After explaining my situation to him, he was able to call Danny, and have him drop my phone back off.
There is no doubt that having your phone fall out of your pocket when you are dropped off at the airport is about the most helpless and miserable feeling in the world. The silver lining here is clearly that despite the miserable circumstance I got to spend the weekend getting to know better people who were willing to help me out of a pretty difficult situation.
Craig Wescoe wins the Pro Tour and saves the day? What a guy!
In all seriousness, Craig is a tremendous player and a very deserving Pro Tour Champion.
The team testing was pretty critical to me performing well at the tournament. We used a message board to coordinate the testing and results we had done separately leading up to the event. Then, when we all arrived in San Diego, we were all pretty much on the same page and ready to get to work.
I had mainly been testing G/W and Naya beatdown decks back in Michigan, but I had also been helping two local friends of mine, Dan Gushen and Jacob Gillium, work on their version of Esper Control. One thing I immediately took notice of was that Esper could be tuned to really punish aggro with cards like Blood Baron of Vizkopa. I also felt that Sphinx’s Revelation made it unlikely that midrange decks would be very good since it simply goes way over the top of people trying to milk value out of nonblue cards.
Here is the Esper Control deck that I worked on and played in the Pro Tour.
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (28)
I was really impressed with how my deck played out, and even the matches that I lost were really close. In a couple of cases, I could have made better plays and possibly ended up actually winning.
I finished 6-4 in Constructed, and here is how I did by matchup.
Esper Control: 1-0
Boros Blitz (Patrick Sullivan): 0-1
Naya Aggro: 0-1
Bant Control: 1-1
G/W Aggro: 5-0
Mulligans were pretty critical in the matches that I ended up losing, and the main reason was lack of lands in my starting hand. For future Return to Ravnica Block online tournaments, I would cut an Orzhov Keyrune to play one more land. I was also really impressed with the card Warped Physique and would swap out a Devour Flesh for one in the maindeck.
I felt the deck was well positioned for the Esper mirror and G/W Aggro, which I thought were going to be the most popular decks in the tournament. I was correct in both assumptions, which enabled me to do fairly well in Constructed because I was prepared for what I was playing against.
I started the Pro Tour off with what I thought was a very good Draft deck.
Creatures (14)
- 1 Brushstrider
- 1 Viashino Racketeer
- 1 Drudge Beetle
- 3 Lobber Crew
- 1 Shambleshark
- 1 Skarrg Guildmage
- 1 Sage's Row Denizen
- 1 Skinbrand Goblin
- 1 Greenside Watcher
- 2 Saruli Gatekeepers
- 1 Zhur-Taa Ancient
Lands (18)
Spells (8)
My strategy for Draft was that I really wanted to force mana fixing and draft a controlling blue deck. I pick the fixing very high in Dragon’s Maze, valuing only bomb uncommons and rares over fixing.
The trick is that when one can easily play three or four colors, every pack seems to present a powerful pick and thus allows one to be much more flexible. When you are a mono-red deck (not that mono-red is very good in multicolor blocks), the only options in a pack are the red cards, but when one is three or four colors, almost any card is fair game to pick.
I felt like the deck was 3-0 or 2-1 quality and was very disappointed to eventually finish 1-2. I ran into Jesse Hampton in round 2, who much to my disappointment had a very solid 3-0, two-color Golgari deck that was actually better than mine. The next round I lost to not drawing a third color in game 3.
I ended up needing to win my last two matches to even make day 2, which I really didn’t want to miss. I dug deep, got the two wins, and squeaked into day 2 at the bottom of the pack.
Day 2 started off much better. I stuck to my guns and found that multicolor control deck was reasonably open. I knew my deck was going to be quite good by the end of the first pack.
Creatures (10)
- 1 Guttersnipe
- 1 Ogre Jailbreaker
- 1 Daggerdrome Imp
- 1 Zameck Guildmage
- 1 Frilled Oculus
- 1 Corpse Blockade
- 1 Nimbus Swimmer
- 2 Opal Lake Gatekeepers
- 1 Skylasher
Lands (17)
Spells (13)
I ended up 3-0 in this pod and was able to improve my overall Draft record to a respectable 4-2. I really wanted to do better than 4-2 because I think I am a much better Limited player than Constructed player, but I was reasonably satisfied with my overall performance considering the circumstances of the first pod.
The two coolest plays I got to make in the tournament both involved Zameck Guildmage.
In a long, grindy control mirror against David Shiels, we arrived at a situation where I had no fliers and was at four life. He drew for the turn, played a creature, extorted me down to three with his Knightly Valor enchanted Basilica Screecher, and attacked for lethal. I activated Zameck Guildmage twice and flashed down a 4/4 Skylasher to block his 3/4 flier!
The other play was against David Ochoa. He was playing a Simic deck that had multiple one-toughness fliers, so I brought in a Beckon Apparition from my sideboard. He attacked with a 3/1 flier, and I activated Zameck Guildmage, played Beckon Apparition, blocked, and then removed the counter to draw a card before damage. I built my own Annihilate!
“No fly zone.”
After going 4-4 on day 1, I put up a much more satisfying 6-2 record on the second day.
I put in a lot of practice (especially for Constructed) leading up to this event, and I feel that it really paid off. For the most part, I played better than I have in quite some time, and when I got off to a bad start, I was able to pull things together, dig deep, and turn things around.
It feels good to know that my performance and record were good enough to deserve a finish in the money even though I got unlucky to ultimately not get paid. 10-6 felt like a solid finish after starting 1-3. At least I got to Silver in the Pro Players Club, which earns me another Pro Tour invite so that I can try again. Hopefully in Dublin I will play well and have good tiebreakers.
Also, for next week, I got to play a bunch of Vintage games with a really sweet Regrowth Gush deck I’ve been working on.
Thanks to Team Luxurious Hair and Danny Batterman.
Congratulations to Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze Champion Craig Wescoe.
Did I mention the $7 for in-flight Internet to submit this article before my deadline? And the beats go on… [Editor’s Note: Dinner is on me at the next Grand Prix, Brian.]
Cheers,
Brian DeMars